President Obama still has yet to visit a top number of sub-Saharan African countries as President. With his stop in Ethiopia in the next few days (the first-ever U.S. presidential visit to Ethiopia), he will have visited 6 countries as the U.S. president (Ethiopia 2015, Kenya 2015, Senegal 2013, Tanzania 2013, Ghana 2009).
By comparison, George W. Bush visited 10 countries (Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, Liberia all in 2008; Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria in 2003), and Bill Clinton visited 8 countries (Nigeria and Tanzania in 2000; Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal in 1998).
The first to have visited an independent African country was Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1943 trip to Liberia, followed by Jimmy Carter’s visits to Liberia and Nigeria in 1978, and George H.W. Bush’s visit to Somalia in 1992-93.
